#zerorating

Card Rating: 8/10

card info: shrouded fable #7/64

variants: reverse holo

art and background are good but it doesn’t really stand out to me

BE NEEDED//

Most notably, Canadian consumers and creators will benefit in the long-term from the net neutrality policies. The CRTC noted that the evidence showed that zero rating offers were typically limited to high-end plans, thereby doing little to increase affordability of wireless services. Moreover, the European experience indicates providers that do not zero rate offer better prices and larger data allowances.

I was chatting with a friend on WhatsApp this evening when he asked me for an audio file. When I told him he could just search YouTube for the music, here’s the reply I got back: “social media bundle”.

I remember when the battle to preserve Net Neutrality was the Internet’s favourite spook. It got a lot of attention, and eventually succeeded in preventing some laws in the US (that were supposed to affect us all) from being passed.

The day was saved thanks to the millions of protesting activists and social media people, and we moved on to fresher scares.

I think I remember some uproar in 2013 in Ghana, when MTN was alleged to have announced they were going to start charging customers separately for WhatsApp. I don’t remember anyone throwing the NN catchword around, but there was anger on Ghana’s Twittersphere. I don’t know what came of that.

Then, months after that, I was intrigued to discover special packages for certain popular web services. I’m not one who follows telco promotions (I don’t bundle) so I didn’t pick up on it until a few months ago. But even then, the trend met with my apathy.

Today (and increasingly) I am seeing this everywhere. Busy’s 4G service is attractive because you can get “dedicated” data for your YouTube and SnapChat, plus a few more gig for “regular browsing”. I recently read a discussion on an online forum that mused “developer bundles” that let you watch YouTube tutorials, zero-rate Github/Bitbucket and StackOverflow and other developer favourites.

I don’t know what to make of this. A part of me has been conditioned by American values to detest Net Neutrality. Another part of me feels this is the natural evolution of the commercial Internet, where access to resources is commonly arbitrarily limited to data bundles (with good reason, apparently) and people are likely to value certain services more than others.

That last bit needs a closer look:

An episode of BBC’s Click TV program filmed in East African about 3 years ago revealed a shocking reality to the host and audience: some people don’t know they are using the Internet. All they know is they’re using Facebook and WhatsApp. 

It turns out the idea of the Internet is too low-level for your average consumer. For her, the services that matter to her are what she values, not some nerdy thing called “the Internet”. And if she can pay more to use those services she loves even more, it makes a natural and obvious choice.

Sometimes we think the average person is dumb (it is mostly true) and in our effort to make money from them, companies and politicians drive the average intellect further down. But I realise that this is a natural step for people as their comfort in any sphere of activity grows.

Just as today, for the least savvy people, the Internet is Google, Facebook, the iPhone’s apps and YouTube, to many people more savvy than the clueless masses, the Internet is the World Wide Web.